Udacity to expand its presence in India market

As per Udacity, it has seen growth across its base of individual learners and those coming through enterprises. (Company Image)US-based online education company Udacity is betting on the Indian market to be one of the growth drivers for its business as it expands its operations in the country.

The company, which offers free and paid courses across various areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality, saw its global revenues growing over 100% year-over-year in 2017 to about $70 million.

In India, Udacity had recently announced a nano degree programme in flying car and drones, and has partnered software services major Infosys to train 500 engineers in Self Driving Car Engineering.

"We have seen over 200% growth in our India operations. Users have opted for varied courses like Python, Big Data, machine learning... The trends are similar to what we see globally," said Udacity India MD Ishan Gupta.

He added that the company is working on expanding partnerships in India to work with more organisations to train their workforce.

Similar to its partnership with Infosys, Udacity also works with companies like Tech Mahindra, Wipro and Just Dial, among others.

"We are very fortunate to have users coming from across India from almost all districts. Like any other Internet-based business, our top city in India is Bangalore, then Delhi, Bombay, and other big cities... we have a lot of smaller cities from where we get users," he said.

Udacity has over 8 million learners on its platform globally. The company did not disclose details about its user base in India but said Udacity has seen growth across its base of individual learners and those coming through enterprises.

"India is a market which has shown a lot of potential. People definitely have more confidence towards online education platforms. Also, we have seen many professionals coming to the platform to learn and stay relevant. We are very positive about it the market," he said.

"In 2018, we want to launch more courses for the Indian audience, have more enterprise partners, work with government agencies, and have more hiring partners. Our intention is to become a full training partner to someone who wants to upskill or reskill," he said.